Let’s have a Saturated Fat Party

Many of us JunkScience folks are rejoicing to see another one bite the dust.

My father, a physician always got apoplectic when he had to listen to the nannies talk about butter and eggs and red meat.

I was, even before i went to college, a junk science debunker, because my dad, RIP, taught me to question the pinheads.

Let’s have a party–with everything the ninny nannies object to.

Glen Beck was talking about his new weight loss diet–he clearly is poorly advised by a food fetishist who recommends things like free range chicken and only organic foods. To lose weight.

Heeeeeyyyyy Glen, move more eat less.

Simple advice and Glen, who is a just a tad obsessive compulsive, is paying some guru of food lots of money and the guru says he probably needs to get a chef.

Take my advice, Glen, and you will lose weight and I want the fees you’re paying this food clown prince neurotic nutrition doc.

So here a news item on the big study about saturated fats.

I think I have put up my best news of the day. Sometimes it’s worth it to do some work.

I wouldn’t have looked for this if not for my lovely wife who heard it on the radio.
yesterday. I note is hasn’t gotten much play–maybe because the food fetish industry is better able to push stuff than us skeptics? I think this is a big deal. Eat red meat–has protein, vitamins, minerals, fat, and is good for you. Food of all kinds is good for you. Stop being anxious.

Precautionary principle driven people are mostly just cowardly and see everything as a risk.

But Bloomberg was working on trans fats–think maybe he’s working on another bad piece of nutritional research????

Whenever discussing whether food is “good for you” or “bad for you” I assume the control group to be not eating at all. So far I’ve found very few substances that are actually bad for you based on this criteria. Anyone who decries cheap, transportable, storable, and easily accessible food has obviously never gone hungry before. Feeling peckish because you skipped lunch doesn’t count.

2) “Registered dietician Dana White, an assistant clinical professor at Quinnipiac University in Conn., told CBS News … there is still a substantial amount of research supporting the idea that a diet high in butter and fatty meats can be ‘detrimental.’

“‘At this point I am not ready to tell patients and students to start increasing the amount of saturated fat in their diets,’ she said.'”

3) “Dr. Christopher Ochner, an assistant professor of pediatrics, adolescent medicine and psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said … ‘To be clear, this by no means indicates that saturated fats are safe or that intake of saturated fats does not need to be monitored…

“‘At this point, individuals should still make sure fats and sugar are consumed in moderation, maintain a healthy body weight, remain physically active, not smoke and have regular medical examinations in order to minimize the risk of cardiovascular disease.'”

So in spite of some fairly (not overwhelmingly) convincing numbers, these folks still want you to worry about what you put in your mouth, and in the case of the advocacy group are utterly unapologetic for having potentially mislead the public for decades in regards to what constitutes a ‘heart-healthy’ diet.

I would also like to point out that most of the authors accepted funding on this study from a large number of sources which might otherwise have preferred a different result, so I’m willing to bet their findings are absolutely legit: http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1846638&atab=7

(Be sure to click on the “[+] Article and Author Information” link just below the list of study authors and check out the list under “Potential Conflicts of Interest.”)

Whether they get any MORE funding for future studies is of course an open question….

One of the strange things is how they label sugar “bad” and starch “good”. When the former contains less sugar molecules per gram than the latter. It’s also just as odd that they recommend unsaturated fats which are both unlike the fats you’d expect to find in a mammal and are very new in terms of the human diet. Somehow these are “healthier” than things people have been eating since prehistoric times.